Behold the phony fuss that Obama “knew” some people would lose their insurance

To hear some people tell it (HERE, for example), President Obama is “a sleaze” because “the White House knew that between 40 percent and 67 percent of individual policy holders were going to lose their coverage under the [health-care] law now moving toward final implementation.

Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times PUTS THE LIE to this nonsense:

This story, chiefly promoted by NBC News, reflects the Washington media’s eternal search for scandal, abetted by every politician’s instinct to reduce even the most complicated ideas to a sound byte.

It was always clear that many insurance policies serving the individual market wouldn’t conform to the coverage requirements set by the Affordable Care Act and would have to be changed. Some were “grandfathered” in, but the rules dictated that any that were changed by the insuring companies — including changes in premiums or other terms — would lose that status.

As a result, millions of policyholders are now being informed that their nonconforming policies are being canceled as of Dec. 31. The idea, of course, is for them to get new policies under Obamacare as of Jan. 1. NBC is breathing heavily over its investigative “discovery” that “because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, 40 to 67% of customers will not be able to keep their policy” mostly because they changed plans.

But is this news? No: The exact same figure was put out by the Obama Adminsitration — in 2010. Here’s a release from the Department of Health and Human Services from June that year, explaining that “40% to two-thirds of people” in the individual market normally change plans in a year, and thus would no longer be in grandfathered plans. Did Obama “know”? Yes, but so did anyone else who was paying attention, including reporters covering healthcare.

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But at no point in his various pitches did Obama include that qualifier. In fact he had said on record that if you liked your doctor or plan you would be able to keep it, period (as I cannot put it in all caps, the period is heavily emphasized). In his speeches about it he never included the qualifier of “as long as it conforms to the ACA mandates.”

If part of this guy’s appeal is his ability to speak and get people to trust him, why didn’t he include that little, yet incredibly vital piece of info? No, he knows that many of the people that voted for him take what he says and believes the words he speaks as gospel truth. Call it lie by omission, deception, whatever, he got caught, no sugarcoating it.

Well he made a promise and guaranteed it, but it wasn’t his fault they changed the law. I know he well look into this as soon as he has finished with the IRS, Benghazi, F&F, spying and now this ACA fiasco. The poor man is surround by incompetents.
He’ll get it sorted out and make good on his promises.
He is working his tail off everyday to make America a better place.

“Section 1251 of the Affordable Care Act contains what’s called a “grandfather” provision that, in theory, allows people to keep their existing plans if they like them. But subsequent regulations from the Obama administration interpreted that provision so narrowly as to prevent most plans from gaining this protection.

“The Departments’ mid-range estimate is that 66 percent of small employer plans and 45 percent of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfather status by the end of 2013,” wrote the administration on page 34552. All in all, more than half of employer-sponsored plans will lose their “grandfather status” and get canceled. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 156 million Americans—more than half the population—was covered by employer-sponsored insurance in 2013.

Another 25 million people, according to the CBO, have “nongroup and other” forms of insurance; that is to say, they participate in the market for individually-purchased insurance. In this market, the administration projected that “40 to 67 percent” of individually-purchased plans would lose their Obamacare-sanctioned “grandfather status” and get canceled, solely due to the fact that there is a high turnover of participants and insurance arrangements in this market. (Plans purchased after March 23, 2010 do not benefit from the “grandfather” clause.) The real turnover rate would be higher, because plans can lose their grandfather status for a number of other reasons.

How many people are exposed to these problems? 60 percent of Americans have private-sector health insurance—precisely the number that Jay Carney dismissed. As to the number of people facing cancellations, 51 percent of the employer-based market plus 53.5 percent of the non-group market (the middle of the administration’s range) amounts to 93 million Americans.”

Wilson, it’s amazing the lengths you and some others will go to justify an outright lie! Hereandnow is absolutely right: ACA was sold to the American people using assurances, among others, that individuals would be able to keep their current insurance. The administration KNEW that wasn’t true, but deliberately withheld that information to sell their product and for political gain. It never ceases to amaze me how the same people who were hyper-critical of Bush just completely lose their sense when it comes to Obama. Obama’s a liar, through and through. You can deny it all you want, but that only makes you look really silly.

Buxton, I don’t think wilson is defending Obama and ACA. Quite the opposite. In all honesty, I think there were many loose ends that weren’t tied down and just assumed that are now coming back to haunt the Obama administration. Considering the amount of controversy this program has invoked, I would have thought the time leading up to and the roll out would have been micro-managed to death. Apparently not. My question is what did Sebelius and her staff and anybody in charge prior to Sebelius do all this time? Why wasn’t more help brought in to get this program launched on time and with minimal bugs months prior to the launch, not afterwards?

As I become more familiar with how the ACA works and the hoops you have to jump through to qualify, its just another welfare program.

You have to meet income requirements and go through an eligibility process every year. That is unless you’re on food stamps, then you go to to the top of the list and get fast tracked as your FS application acts as your ACA application and you get free healthcare through the Medicaid program. If your income changes in the year and the tax credit your assigned is too much, you have to pay up the difference at tax time. That could cause quite a big tax bill for people who may not be expecting it. Especially if you and your family are near the cusp of the income eligibility amount.

I’m trying to remain open minded about this change to our healthcare system, but the lack of support I encountered from the various community partners, left a lot to be desired. Agencies either told me they couldn’t help me and didn’t even know they were on the community partner list, or I had to choose a phone prompt that had nothing to do with my reason for calling, or had to leave a message with my soc sec # because it was assumed I was already on some welfare program, or the person told me to call another agency, or they said call back in a couple weeks because there was nothing in place to process the application yet or they were an agency that serviced minorities such as African Americans, Native Americans or people with AIDS. I’m in none of those categories. I finally found one entity on the list that was helpful although another person I referred to them didn’t get the same help I did and they just offered to mail them an application. The only method in place to process applications is manual as of this date. You have to have some one send you an application as the ability to print off an application only works with certain browsers.

It’s a very bad product roll out of something that could have been done better considering the time they had to get it done. If this product was created by a Wall Street traded company, the share price would have tanked and investors would begin law suits for being misled.

Did you even bother to read the article?
But is this news? No: The exact same figure was put out by the Obama Adminsitration — in 2010. Here’s a release from the Department of Health and Human Services from June that year, explaining that “40% to two-thirds of people” in the individual market normally change plans in a year, and thus would no longer be in grandfathered plans. Did Obama “know”? Yes, but so did anyone else who was paying attention, including reporters covering healthcare.”
Obama didn’t launch a war on false premises. Any supposed outrage aimed at Obama will always be minuscule compared to the ridiculousness of that eight years and the people who supported it. Obama inherited the NSA and only now are conservatives upset. They are only upset over spending now. They are only upset over drones now. Any outrage directed at Obama is partisan out of hate for an opposing team rather than concern for an issue. Quoting Michelle Malkin’s site won’t add credibility to an argument but demonstrate that it is partisan.

Yes he inherited the NSA.
Barack Obama in 2007: “This Administration also puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand… That means no more illegal wire-tapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient. That is not who we are. And it is not what is necessary to defeat the terrorists… We will again set an example for the world that the law is not subject to the whims of stubborn rulers, and that justice is not arbitrary.”
b
And then he put the NSA on steroids. You lefties faulted Bush, but anything this administrations does is A OK.
He in fact abused the Patriot act to the nth degree, I think that upsets conservatives.
If Bush had misused the act as Obama has, you lib’s would be calling for his head.
“The White House’s justification for collecting Americans’ phone data doesn’t stand up to the light of day.”http://articles.latimes.com/2013/aug/19/opinion/la-oe-sensenbrenner-data-patriot-act-obama-20130819